Warning: Mentions of blood, injuries and pain in a slighlty explicit way , nothing outside of the fantasy-violence label
Mortigus stopped at the river he’d visited so many times during his years of forest life. The glistening water was particularly tranquill, with few flies darting on the surface. Mortigus looked around, noticing that his neighbours were missing: a small wolf family that would drink from the river on afternoons like this one. At first he was scared to approach them, but over the years Mortigus was able to peacefully coexist with them. He was no longer made of flesh after all and the wolves grew to realise he was no meal and no threat either. But now, the riverbench was seemingly empty, leaving Mortigus almost alone. A green, blurry eye was glaring at Mortifus from on top of the water veil. In its stare resided confusion and discontent, like a stranger coming too close to him. Mortigus was a tiresome sight for this eye, something monotonous, beyond any tolerance, polluting his sight yet again. Living like this for so long, yet this eye’s stare still followed Mortigus wherever there was a reflection. How would one find such resentment just in looking at himself? A projection of others’ perception of him, an accumulation of all the fear Mortigus had towards the reactions of people to his new form. A hypothetical hate he would attribute to only the beasts slain in his bedtime stories. The doctors’ treated him inhumanly, but what he felt from them was not hate exactly, rather a calculated indifference, indifference for his freedom and for his pain.
This eye held a glimmer of past inside it, as now Mortigus could tell this was not the first time he bore such a stare, maybe not on himself but on someone else . Back in his village, there was one kid, whose name he could not remember anymore. He used to play with them when he was younger, a kid who would hide a part of his face under a head scarf. Mortigus, nor his parents seemed to pay any mind to the scarf until one day, when Mortigus saw the kid slip, the scarf falling to the side. The kid panicked and picked it up hurriedly, covering his forehead. However, Mortigus caught a glimpse of the kid’s third eye that was usually buried behind the scarf. His face at that moment had clearly given out his confusion and even slight disgust, as an ignorant kid that couldn’t interpret this bizarre sight. The other kid was shaking, disheartened by Mortigus’ expression. The kid implored Mortgius to tell no one of this occurrence saying his parents would get really mad at him if his scarf would ever slip in front of another. From that moment onward, Mortigus would see this kid less and less often, for no reason that would be clear to Mortigus’ kid self, until the kid’s family moved further away in the village and they never saw each other since.
Prejudice, that is what that kid and his family feared, and is the same thing Mortigus now had grown to fear, as even his stare would reflect the alienating way others’ probably would treat his appearance. He hated the way he looked, but was it because of personal dislike or rather because others would hate him for his appearance? Where did his own perception end and the others begin?
The glimmer of the water had started to dwindle, as the sun’s descent announced the upcoming evening. Small ripples finally broke the perceiving eyes of the river, intense splashes shattering the gentle murmur of the river. Mortigus raised his head in panic. A pillar of thick fur and muscles was charging through the river bed, its gaze finally meeting Mortigus’. A spark went down from his head to his legs, begging his body to run from the bear-like beast, finally overpowering the panic of the moment. With the forest behind him, Mortigus dashed towards it, with the beast following like an upcoming storm. Mortigus ran between the trees, crouching under branches and getting scratched. Guided by fear once again, he could only focus on running as the low growls mixed with heavy breathing were slowly getting closer. The bear cared little for the branches breaking off from its charge. This was no territorial dispute, no animal would pull such a chase if it wasn’t for a deep hunger. Bears are well-known omnivores and Mortigus might be the most foolish prey around.
As Mortigus gained a bit of distance thanks to the clumped-together trees, he jumped on a tree, clinging to the first branch his hand could get to. Mortigus wasn’t able to climb too far up until the bear crashed into the tree, shaking it violently. Then it started clawing at it, trying to climb but to little success. Mortigus barely got to a higher branch despite the shaking produced by the bear. Looking down, Mortigus finally took a look at the silhouette of the bear, finally able to see it properly beyond pure fear. It was not an encouraging sight, as the beast with broad shoulders was almost the size of a horse. Its roars and grunts continued as it chipped away at the bark with its claws. Mortigus considered the probable necessity to sleep in the tree for that night, if he could ever ignore the stubborn snarls and clawing around the tree. Or so he thought, until the tree gave out, the branch creaked in anticipation, and Mortigus was forced to jump onto the nearest branch, slipping and tumbling down the tree. He got up like a loaded spring, limping a bit from a bruised knee, but a strident shadow was already looming over him.
Like a thunderstrike, five claws drove into Mortigus’ shoulder, piercing it with little effort. The clawed paw put its pressure onto the shoulder, an incredible force driving into the point connecting Mortigus’ arm to his torso. Like ropes being pulled beyond their limits, the fibres in his arm started to give up, sending needles of shock to his head. His tendons were riddled with spasms and a clear liquid faintly started dripping from the severed fibres. In the span of a second, his enlarged eye witnessed his arm being ripped apart, hanging onto his shoulder by only a thread. The bear’s jaws followed, grabbing onto the elbow of the ruined arm, though barely any pain could even be felt anymore. In his desperation, Mortigus swung his body away, and as the bear didn’t falter and kept its gripped fangs onto the arm, Mortigus’ limb was completely removed, leaving only an exposed shredded wound. The bear was not pleased with just an arm unfortunately and dropped it from his mouth, preparing to charge again after the mushroom creature who was stumbling his feet while trying to get away. To Mortigus’ luck, he didn’t seem to be losing much blood, or the equivalent of what this mushroom body produced, but he couldn’t ignore the pain either. The beast was already next to him before he could realise, its front claw in full swing, ready to pummel him into the ground. Mortigus already fell onto the grass terrified, moments away from death, his remaining right arm implanted into the damp soil. Mortigus felt his emotions, blood and breath leave his body from head to toe, entering the ground below. And the ground breathed back, and like a splash of blood, a wall of mushrooms rose from the soil, desperately pushing away the bear’s claw. The beast flinched for a second, this sudden attack briefly interrupting its blind hunt and its instincts. Mortigus was none the wiser about the magic that transpired from his right hand. Over the pain taking spiked roots in his left shoulder another feeling of swelling started in his right arm. Spores would float around for each time he would flex his muscles and an instinct resurfaced from an unfathomable pit in his soul. This instinct told him to push his will into the ground yet again, to take control of the mushrooms he gave life to. Awakening from his daze, the bear jumped to the side, around the mushroom wall, and attempted a bite at Mortigus’ remaining arm. Yet again, mushrooms spurred with force, pushing the bear back. As it tried to cut them down, more mushroom caps emerged, surrounding Mortigus like a wall. Mortigus continued to push his will into the same mushrooms The bear backed off a little, continuing to roar in an intimidation attempt. The truth was the beast grew wary, frightened by the inexplicable phenomenon. The bear wound back before charging at the mushrooms, breaking through the mushroom wall, only for it to find nothing. Confused, it tried to smell its surroundings, but as its nose was raised up, an irritating air struck the bear, making it retreat away from the mushrooms. WIth a few final noises, the bear headed to the ripped arm, picking it up in its jaw and running away back towards the river.
From behind the mushroom, Mortigus arose from his hiding spot. With shock, he would watch closely as the bear’s silhouette dissolved into the distance. Mortigus was finally safe. His right hand was shaking with tinges of pain lingering along his forearm to his fingertips. Once the bear vanished for good, Mortigus began dragging his feet towards his sinkhole, navigating the darkness by memory. Upon reaching his makeshift home, he pushed his fingers into the ground yet again, giving form to a mushroom wall. This time however, perhaps due to his power weakening, or his consciousness fading, or his lack of strong emotions, the mushrooms took several minutes to grow to a considerable size. As soon as he was done, Mortigus let his legs loose, as he collapsed inside his home.
In the morning, Mortigus woke up to his wound around his shoulder already formed into a scar, as well as his knee almost fully recovered. The lump on his shoulder produced a fair amount of pain upon touch, but certainly far less than what would be assumed for a ripped limb. Mortigus stood up despite feeling unbalanced. Having to rely only made things more difficult, all his clumsy gestures and mistakes amplified. His right arm ended up overloaded, causing another source of discomfort. In a few days, Mortigus noticed his arm began to heal, forming a pseudo-bone that almost reached where his elbow was supposed to be. Notch by notch, in another few days, all that was missing now was his fingers, as up to his wrist his arm healed miraculously. This body was made to be able to regenerate beyond human capabilities, perhaps this was the goal of the doctors all along? Was there a purpose beyond attempting to create a more resilient organism? The few experiments he got the displeasure to be part of involved cutting small parts of his tissue, it might be possible that if he stayed longer….The thought almost caused him to vomit. Nonetheless, Mortigus brought his mind back to the present. He was curious if this applied to all his limbs and organs, if he could truly heal from anything, but testing this would be rather dangerous and not void of pain. After he regained even his fingers, he tested how long cuts and bruises would take to heal, and with each try, they would heal back up slightly faster than before. In the end he ended up sick of these self-inflicted injuries and decided to focus on the other peculiar event from his encounter with death: the spontaneous mushrooms he was able to produce. For his own survival, he had to understand what this power truly held.
At first, experimentation was relegated to afternoons, Mortigus spreading a few spores around a clearing in the forest. It took hours for him to produce even the faintest glow at the tip of his fingers, slowly giving life to the mushrooms like morning dew. With further consideration, he recognised that his body must have started to behave more similarly to mushrooms, his cuts and bruises always healing faster in the shade and humidity, feeling an unmatched comfort when hiding under a tree or in the quiet evenings after rainstorms. This must have meant that his body, if perhaps even his powers, could be stronger in the right conditions. His emotions of fear, of desperation no longer fuelled the magic within him, as they did during the bear’s attack, and so now he could rely only on determination. And so it was, letting small patches of colourful mushroom turn slowly into gardens of alien textures filling the forest trails. With the aid of warm rains and the gentle shadows of the leaves, Mortigus began to grow mushrooms from spores to fully mature in minutes, even seconds, twisting their forms slightly, like a painter who still felt awkward about the weight and movement of a brush. An oddity was the reliance on Mortigus’ magic that these mushrooms presented: after a few hours in which he would not offer them anymore of his “energy”, they would slowly shrivel up and promptly disappear, as if their existence was an extension of Mortigus’ care for them. Testing his powers became rather a pastime, keeping his mind focused on better understanding his body and the weird relationship with mushrooms. Indeed, he could push fungi both created and not created by him to grow exponentially, reaching usually triple the size of a regular mushroom of that species. His precision was lacking for sure, but it wasn’t something he couldn’t hone. THe variety in species of fungi allowed for surprising effects, as bioluminescent caps of a green glow illuminated Mortigus’ little spot in the forest, bringing a sense of tenderness to the solitary nights.
Progress began to get slower, and his hands were almost automatic in their release of this growth energy, relying more on instinct and practice rather than focus. And now, his mind could no longer run away from his sense of purpose, or rather, the lack of purpose to this training, to his life. Powers such as this were certainly going to prove useful in the future, for self-defence, food and even shelter, but what good were they if his purpose remained to stay alive in this forest? Was he meant to simply guard himself from the likes of human travellers and bears for how everlong this bizarre body was capable of living? Purpose, goal, meaning of some sort, Mortigus felt he could no longer distract himself from the monotone state of his mind. As mushrooms continued to spur slowly around him, his eye gazed into the sky, without even processing beyond the rough colours of the horizon.
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